Transformers Trailer released

A new Transformers Trailer was released this week. This trailer features the first samples we have seen thus far of the CG robots. There has been concern expressed online that the new movie will not play well because Michael Bay, director of the film, decided not to utilize the established style/characters of the classic 1980(s) cartoon series that brought the animated robots from Japan to America. The visuals in the trailer look pretty good. I am keeping my fingers crossed that Speilberg, as executive producer, helps the movie to succeed.

The first rule of blog club is you don’t write about blog club…

Mark over at Weblog Tools Collection wrote a cute little post titled “Things You Should Avoid Blogging About“. In summary,

1. Don’t write about your pet
2. Don’t gripe about how busy you are
3. Don’t whine about comments (specifically lack of)
4. Don’t lament the future in-laws
5. Don’t write ‘dear diary, i never dreamed this would happen to me…’

So, in summary, blog authors should not be so self absorbed. While there is a time and place for everything, and sometimes breaking the rules yields interesting results, many of these rules seem like good ideas.

Fallen Art

Thomasz Baginski wrote and directed a short animated piece titled ‘Fallen Art‘. The piece was created by Platige Image, a Polish visual effects company.

Fallen Art is a story about generals, soldiers, and a very special project (watch the video — I will not ruin the surprise for you!). Baginski uses sound to weave this tale. High atop a make-shift wooden tower you can hear the wind screaming. The ribbit of a frog signals the next step in an on-going tale. Plus the crazy ballet/dance of music of the ‘very special project’.
Background

According to the very short Wikipedia ‘Thomas Baginski’ article: Thomas was born in 1976, is Polish, and received an oscar nomination for his other short animated piece titled The Cathedral.

Don’t cry, it is just Santa…

Today, Boingboing.net featured a classic link to SouthFlorida.com’s ‘Scared of Santa‘ gallery of photos featuring children crying and fleeing from scary old saint nick. This collage of photos is always good for a laugh.

It is the final countdown: YouTube vs. Google Video vs. Revver

Chris Pirillo posted a fun video experiment to his blog titled YouTube vs. Google Video vs. Revver. Chris recorded three different video testimonals each lauding the benefits of one specific video player while pointing out the defects of other ‘inferior’ web players. The result of playing all three videos at the same time should make just about anyone laugh. I especially like the end of the Revver video where Chris growls and barks like a dog while saying ‘rev, rev, rev revver!’

BlueSky Studios Challenge

Over the past few weeks a new favorite web site has crept into my daily web lurking. BlueSky Studios Challenge is a blog run by staff of BlueSky Studios (the folks who made ‘Ice Age’ and ‘Robots). Each week, the brilliant illustrators and animators from BlueSky challenge each other to draw clever and unique illustrations. Past contests have included Halloween, The Wizard of Oz, Saturday Morning Cartoons. In one contest titled “Superheros” brave new heros such as ‘Mapple Syrup Man’ and ‘The Incredible Close Talking Carl’ were born.

A few years back I induldged in months of fun and humorous ‘photoshoping’ contests hosted at Fark.com. Making unique and creative illustrations seems like a much steeper challenge. Viewing the wonderful creations of the BlueSky staff builds a desire within me to hone my own drawing skills so that I too may one day participate!

From the BlueSky Studios Challenge web site, their mission is described as follows:

Every monday a new challenge is posted. The participants do their “take” on the subject matter and post it. Challenges are open ended, meaning any participant can go back and draw something from a previous week. Email Jake for new challenge suggestions. This is for BlueSky kids only. Though anyone can participate at home. Or if you want to, post a link to your peice in the comments section.

Elephants Dream

On May 18th, 2006 a team of six people released a beautiful animation under a creative commons license titled ‘Elephants Dream‘. By May 29th, over 500,000 visitors had downloaded the animation. Over the months that followed remixes of the animation began to appear online. A ‘making of’ video was released by the creators of ‘Elephants Dream’ and is worth a look.

‘Elephants Dream’ is the result of almost a year of work, a project initiated and coordinated by the Blender Foundation. Six people from the Blender user/development community were selected to come over to Amsterdam to work together on an animated short movie, utilizing Open Source tools only.

The Elephant’s Dream web site features:

• High Definition and standard downloads of the animation
• Background information about the project
• Soundtrack and high resolution image downloads

The animation was created using open source software called Blender.

Blender is [the] open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

Budding 3D animators, modelers, and texture designers have a unique opportunity: to purchase a DVD containing the original movie, as well as all of the source materials and original files. The DVD also includes the original script and story boards.

Asteroid’s Revenge

Flashninjaclan.com has a very creative game titled Asteroid’s Revenge.

In this version of Asteroids you pilot an asteroid and must avoid a field of starships that fire at you. When your asteroid is hit, it shrinks in size.

From Wikipedia, re: Asteroids:

Asteroids was inspired, in a roundabout way, by the seminal Spacewar!, the first computer-based video game. In the early 1980s a stand-up arcade game version was produced as Space Wars, which included a number of optional versions and added a floating asteroid as a visual device. Asteroids is essentially a one-player version of Spacewar!, featuring the “wedge” ship from the original and promoting the asteroids to be the main opponent.

The game was conceived by Lyle Rains and programmed and designed by Ed Logg. Asteroids was a hit in the United States and became Atari’s best selling game of all time. Atari had been in the process of releasing another vector beam game, Lunar Lander, but demand for Asteroids was so high they stopped further production of Lunar Lander so they could begin building Asteroids. The first 200 Asteroids machines were sent out in Lunar Lander cabinets. Asteroids was so popular that video arcade owners usually had to install larger boxes to hold all the coins this machine raked in.

One feature of the game was the ability for players to record their initials with their high scores, an innovation which is standard in arcade games to this day.

37 Signals criticizes buzzwords and makes a good argument for simplicity

Matt Linderman over at 37 Signals wrote a thought provoking article titled “Buzzwords say all the wrong things“. Matt advocates the use of simple speach that is easy for all to understand. He indicates that it has been his experience that for many individuals:

“These buzzwords are often a mask. People who use them are covering up their ideas — or the lack thereof. They are overcompensating. They don’t have anything substantial to say so they try to use impressive sounding words instead.”

I think Matt misses an opportunity to observe that some people may tend to use buzzwords to fit in with co-workers or associates — there can be a strong drive to be part of the “IT Crowd”. Others may use complex language and exhausted sounding buzzwords to gain recognition from supervisors or upper management.

In addition to speaking in simple terms it may be helpful to slow down. Fast paced, intense deadlines may prevent people from gaining the understanding they need to master the task at hand.

New Weird Al “White and Nerdy” video

My friend John MacKenzie sent over a link to Weird Al’s new video titled “White and Nerdy”. The video is very funny and cashes in on many cliches and stereotypes about nerd and geek culture. White and Nerdy is the first track of Weird Al’s new album titled “Straight Outta Lynwood“.

Related web sites

• The Official “Weird Al” Yankovic web site